Behind the leaves, the myna bird is mocking us,
pretending to be an emergency.
“Fire! Fire! Fire!” it screeches from the green darkness
which is the best kind,
between boughs knuckled like bone or the indentations
on the steering wheel of a car
sitting in a layby at dawn beside a field of winter wheat
on the other side of the world
where the night glide DJ has a voice as thick as smoke
in the dashboard’s glow.
“Love! Love! Love!” they soul like a mayday to the stars
for the adulterous lovers who sip
motorway coffee in the beams of vast transporters
off the early ferry from Dieppe
containing asylum seekers from Timbuktu, Mali
twinned with Hay-on-Wye
where they do love books but not enough to hide them
under their beds from Boko Haram
on pain of execution
or to learn the sacred words as comfort for internment.
Featured in July Poem of the Month by The Verve Poetry Festival
Mark Fiddes 
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